Understanding how UX drives business

Good design is simple, beautiful, and easy to use. It creates a sense of purpose and of place. It anticipates and responds to user needs. But aside from these subjective...

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Good design is simple, beautiful, and easy to use. It creates a sense of purpose and of place. It anticipates and responds to user needs. But aside from these subjective characteristics, how can we know whether a design is “good”?

Moreover, how can a business know whether a design was worth the investment of time and money? Without strong product and user interface design, Apple would likely have disappeared long ago. Similarly, without its simplicity of function, Google might have been viewed as just another search engine. These companies approach design di?erently: Contrast the iPod’s powerful elegance with Google’s starkly utilitarian interface.

Nonetheless, both companies have demonstrated a consistent emphasis on design while their competitors have not. In companies that “get it,” designers, managers, and executives intuitively understand that good design can be a powerful competitive advantage. If good design indeed provides a real bene?t, though, it should be possible to calculate its ROI.

All you would need are appropriate, measurable values to plug into the equation. But our experience has shown that few companies are attempting such calculations. Why is that?

We believe that it’s because we’re accustomed to thinking that design is subjective. The challenge in valuing user experience is in moving away from opinion and toward observation. User experience design is not merely aesthetic. Rather, its aim is to guide and facilitate users’ behavior, which can be observed and measured. To make good business decisions, we need to measure the outcome — and the impact — of design projects: Did the design change user behavior? How valuable is behavior change to the business? Was it worth the investment?

(source: excerpts from a report published and issued by Adaptive Path)